This year’s popular names are anything but new. Trending names for the coming year are right out of the Bible.   According to data collected by popular baby name site BabyNames.net, biblical names have been popular over the past decade, but more obscure choices are gaining in popularity.

Names like Joshua, Noah, Michael, Abigail, Hannah and Sarah are not new choices.  The name Jacob has made the top boys’ name since 1999.  However, four-months worth of recent data collected by BabyNames.net from 3,500 registered couples and 25,000 votes from their social circles via their “belly ballot” name-voting service has shown a jump in unexpected names.

“The popular names for boys will be Levi, Caleb, Isaac, Luke and Isaiah,” says columnist Julie D. Andrews, who follows celebrity baby-naming trends for the site. “For girls, we are going to see Naomi, Shiloh and Judith.”

“We’ve had biblical names in the past, but then we sort of got away from that a little bit and went to this trend of really being creative, trying to win the competition for the most original, even inventing names (for example,Gwyneth Paltrow’s child, Apple) and waiting to hear what was new and different,” Andrews explained to Fox News recently.

“Now we’re really coming away from that and going back to history and tradition. There is so much lure and stories about traditional biblical names. We’re looking for that bedrock and foundation of things that we know and are familiar with, there is a lot of comfort in that and that’s what we’re really getting back to,” she told Fox News.

“There are stories, allegories, lessons in life attached to these biblical names,” says Andrews.

“Biblical names surging back into our culture is a great turn for the better. After many years, it shows that people are feeling stronger about their faith and that they have hope once again,” Lucie Wisco, editor of of the belly ballot, told CNA.

But Wisco says it’s not all about tradition.  “The massive thing that we’ve been seeing is definitely the unconventional spelling, and I think that will definitely continue to rise.

“It’s breaking out and it’s almost like a fusion…It’s taking names that are already popular, like Jacob and Michael, and other names that weren’t as frequently seen previously, and changing the spelling,” she explains.

“Look for biblical names, but with unusual spellings like Mykel and Izak,” warns Andrews.